The news report on Department of Energy informing of Abound Solar demise surprised many people and led to the usual media excitement of Obama’s faulty loans to cleantech companies. However to any solar industry follower it was an expected death and the only surprise was that it took so long. Chinese solar crystalline panel prices […]

However India’s biggest capital good equipment company BHEL owned by the government is plannning a $500 million investment to build a solar cell factory in at Sakoli which is part Union heavy industries minister Praful Patel’s constituency Bhandara.Talk about how dumb you can get. BHEL hardly has too much expertise in the solar panel industry and with solar cells in massive oversupply,it is almost sure to lose money. However that is how things work with Indian government companies where investment is made at the whims of ministers rather than rationality and business sense.BHEL is currently trading at one of the lowest valuations in its 10 year history and its not a big wonder why. The company has benefited in the past as did other machinery and engineering companies from an infrastructure invesment boom. However those glory days are over for the company as it faces competition from the Chinese companies and decreasing orders flow. Praful Patel the minister has already spent a few years in the airline ministry presiding over the conversion of the state owned carrier Air India ino a basket case. Now its the turn of BHEL to be turned into a basket case as well.

However I think that with the prices going down by such a lot , demand elasticity is rapidly picking up leading First Solar to unexpectedly start its closed German plants. With most sell side analysts giving up the industry for dead, volumes dying down and a sense of doom existing ,its time to build positions here as the major solar companies like Trina,Yingli continue to grow volumes by 30-50% .

Solar Stocks have made their investors suicidal with drops of of 80-90% from the top common even amongst the biggest solar companies. A number of solar companies like Q-Cells, Solar Millenium, Solon which used to be amongst the 10 biggest ones have gone bankrupt. In fact most of the German solar companies have either gone […]

The Indian Solar Power has been one bright spot in the gloomy infrastructure and engineering sectors in 2011. With share prices crashing with growing corruption, land acquisition and financing problems, Solar Energy has surged in India thanks to government support and subsidies . While a number of Green Technology companies have started up to capitalize on the growing renewable energy trend, the established constuction companies in India have not been far behind . While utilities like Tata Power, Adani, Reliance Power, NTPC have already built or are setting up power plants based on solar panels , L&T has become a major solar EPC players . L&T is now raising debt with a $100 million issue to fund its solar expansion plans .

power projects.See below for the problems besetting India’s thermal power project developers.Note wind and solar power projects are seeing more interent from debt syndication lenders like IDFC,IL&FS because of 2 reasons

a) Strong support from state and federal governments which are going all out to support Renewable Energy through tax breaks,feed in tariffs,capital subsidy

b) Secure Power Purchase Agreements (PPA) by NVVN at even higher prices for green energy

c) No problems of fuel supply availability that plagues the coal and gas power plants in India

d) Lesser Environmental issues that beset the Coal Power and Nuclear Power Plants in India with local agitations

e) Land Acquisitions problems are also lower as solar and wind power plants don’t require prime land